Grave Situation

by Alex MacLean

  It was a beautiful morning outside. The sky was an impeccable blue, yet the air brought in a slight chill from the nearby harbor.

  Allan paused on the church steps, took out his cell phone and pager and turned both of them on. Then he shaded his eyes with a hand and watched Philip and Carol get into their car behind the hearse.

  Allan wouldn’t follow the cortege to the gravesite. Instead he would go home to change, say his goodbyes to Buddy and then head straight to Acresville with hopes of finding a killer.

  35

  Acresville, May 19

  1:00 p.m.

  Why’d it have to be here? wondered Herb.

  As he drove his truck into Rolling Hills Cemetery and parked in the small car lot just inside the gates, he was struck first with feelings of nostalgia and then the emergence of forgotten anguish that he had long repressed.

  It was over eighteen years since he last stepped foot in this place. He now fought a deep urge to turn around and leave.

  Rolling Hills was aptly named. Fifty-two acres of gently sloping meadows were graced with mature sugar maples and crisscrossed with winding footpaths. A crumbling stone wall, over a century old, enclosed rows of granite and marble slabs, crosses and brooding angels with upraised arms that rose and fell in swells of green with seemingly endless continuity. Here and there, colorful flowers and garlands bespoke the existing presence of loved ones.

  The largest, oldest and only non-sectarian cemetery in Acresville, Rolling Hills first opened its gates in 1825. Since then, generation upon generation of families chose the Hills as their final resting place. Encroached on the north side of the cemetery was its oldest section. Time had faded both the epitaphs and the memories they bore. Many of the town’s first settlers were buried there.

  Three years ago the cemetery could hold no more. It became inactive, yet has remained well tended. The few burial plots left were bought many years ago.

  Herb looked around, seeing no one.

  Perfect.

  He came here to locate a certain grave. Hopefully, the caretakers hadn’t covered it yet with sod. From a shirt pocket, Herb retrieved a slip of paper and double-checked the name written on it. He picked up the binoculars from the seat beside him and stepped outside.

  The day was warm, the sun brilliant. Here and there, fetching arcs of clouds swept the sky.

  Herb followed an uphill path, his gaze exploring the area.

  Strange, he thought.

  The cemetery wasn’t as he remembered it. It had grown at an alarming rate—crowded, choking for breath. Only now did Herb fathom the lives lost in the past eighteen years.

  At the crest of the hill he stopped and as he looked off to his left, felt his skin rise. For several moments he stood there, overwhelmed by sudden feelings of guilt and sadness.

  She was out there; he could feel her.

  He knew he should go see her. He hadn’t visited her since she died over eighteen years ago. The grief and shame had been just too great.

  With faltering steps he started through the stillness. He cut across the top of the second hill on a diagonal. By memory, he searched an area near the maple trees.

  Moments later, he stared down at a small granite marker set into the ground. Dead leaves partially covered the inscription. There were no fresh flowers. No flowers at all to mark someone’s remembrance and that embarrassed Herb.

  He knelt down and brushed away the leaves. The stone felt cool and rough beneath his trembling fingers. The simple words inscribed were still painful.

  Marilyn Elaine Matteau

  June 9, 1940 – Oct. 27, 1991

  Beloved Wife And Mother

  “Hello, Mama,” Herb whispered. “It’s me, your orphaned son.”

  Alongside the grave lay an empty plot for her husband, his father. As Herb stared at it, he became very still. For a moment he closed his eyes, lost to the past.

  * * *

  Herb approached the Acresville Hospital entrance with leaden steps. When he reached the doors, he stopped, turned, and looked up at a drab sky that had just begun to squeeze out a cold shower. He felt as if he were wandering through a dream, more mind than body. The cars pulling in and out of the parking lot, the people brushing past him at the doors, the rain turning everything to a glassy sheen, were all surreal fragments on his consciousness.

  Slowly, he went inside.

  In the lobby he pressed a button for the elevator and waited. The doors opened and a couple of people came out. After stepping inside after them, Herb pressed the button for the third floor. The doors closed behind him with a hiss. On this day his nerves were on edge. The tiny compartment made him feel caged, almost claustrophobic.

  With a bump the elevator began to move upward. Herb gripped the rail, his face pinched. He shut his eyes and exhaled a long breath.

  Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  The chime of the elevator made him flinch. The doors opened to the second floor. In a mire of anxiety, Herb didn’t look up. He heard some people shuffle inside, felt the car shudder with the weight of their unseen bodies. Over their whispered voices, he heard the doors hiss shut again.

  He swallowed.

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen

  In quick succession, the chime rang for the third floor. Something inside made him shiver. Lifting his head, he watched the doors open to a glossy corridor. He stepped off, resisting the urge to turn back. His slow walk was a series of half-noticed impressions—a blue-uniformed housekeeper stuffing soiled laundry into a chute; a gray-haired doctor emerging from a room, his gaze focused on a chart; an elderly man in a robe shuffling down the far end of the hallway, an IV pole trailing him.

  Doors ran down both sides of the corridor. From a room up the hallway came a plaintive cry for someone named Ivan. Moments later, a nurse hurried past him, carrying a bottle of medication. He listened to her squeaky footsteps fade away to silence. There was the sound of a door closing and then the cries stopped.

  Room 532 was the sixth one on the left, right across from the nurse’s station. As Herb reached it, his breathing became heavy. He froze in the doorway, ashamed at his cowardice to enter.

  His mother, he saw, was as she had been the day before, resting peacefully in her bed. A heart rate monitor was clipped to one finger. An oxygen tube was strapped under her nose. Overhead, the fluorescent lights captured what devastation cancer had done to her, a wasting disease that knew no mercy.

  She was a ghost of the woman she had once been. Emaciated. Bald from weeks of chemo. Her face, barely recognizable, had become a loose mask collapsed against the bone. A yellowish hue saturated her skin. The hollows of her eyes were in shadow.

  The hospital had called Herb’s home an hour earlier. The voice at the other end was soft, reluctant. An on-duty nurse. His mother had taken a turn for the worse. Family members were asked to be at her bedside. There wasn’t much time left. Listening to her, Herb felt the words in the pit of his stomach. His eyes closed. A painful lump formed in his throat. He couldn’t speak.

  When he put down the phone all he could think of with certain dread was this moment now. The final good-bye he’d have to face.

  Her bed was partitioned off from the others by a curtain. Looking around, Herb was surprised at his father’s absence. At fifty-three, the man had become a withdrawn, brooding presence. If not working the farm, he would be drinking alone, mumbling resentments at the world. In his own self-hatred, he was unable to face the man he’d become or acknowledge the suffering he’d put his wife and son through. He seemed to care little about them.

  Herb loathed him for it.

  There was a chair by the bed. Gathering himself, he moved toward it and sat. The room was cool and quiet. He laid a hand on the sheets, inches from his mother’s arm. She seemed to be barely breathing.

  On the other side of the bed was a heart monitor. The line
on the screen had the appearance of a soft wave rolling.

  For nearly a week his mother had drifted in and out of consciousness. Often she would only stare vacantly at the ceiling, as if he were invisible. Incapacitated by the morphine administered to her for the chronic pain. Other times she would be confused as to where she was. Thinking she was still at home, she would try to get out of bed to do her housework. Too frail, she would collapse on the floor.

  It was hard for Herb to see his mother like that, wasting away in both body and mind. Everyday it agonized him more to come here.

  He leaned forward in a whisper. “Mama. I’m here.”

  There was no response. For a long moment, Herb didn’t say a word. The only sound was a steady blip from the heart monitor.

  Her pendant necklace lay on the bedside table. Slowly, he reached for it. The pendant had a raised image of Saint Christopher with an infant Jesus on his shoulder. Turning it over, he saw his mother’s name inscribed on the back.

  For as long as he could remember his mother had been a practicing Catholic. At a young age, she had shared her faith with him, reading to him from her Bible whenever his father wasn’t around. On Sundays, she would take him to church for morning service. The ritual became persistent throughout his childhood. Herb took comfort in the church’s tranquility, its open vastness, and its beautiful stained glass windows. It was also his refuge away from home. If for only once a week, he could at least escape.

  As a teenager Herb’s church attendance began to slip. With adolescence came self-consciousness. He was pressured by how others at school might see him. Something about a teenage boy going to church with his mother seemed awkward, embarrassing. His mother appeared to understand.

  Now he hated himself for it.

  Only once in that time had he returned to his faith and to God—three weeks ago when his mother was hospitalized. For the first time in many years he slipped into the rear pew. The church was jammed. Neither the soothing voice of the minister or the melodious hymns of the choir did much to quell the storm of emotions raging inside him.

  When the service was over and most of the parishioners were gone, Herb walked up to the altar. Slowly, he genuflected, crossed himself and prayed to God for his mother’s recovery.

  Squeezing the pendant tightly in his hand, he prayed now for the repose of her soul. Then he sat there, listening to his mother’s shallow breathing.

  Muffled voices came from the hallway. Now and again, a nurse would come into the room, making her rounds. Herb checked the doorway every few minutes for his father, but he never showed up.

  Probably drunk, Herb thought.

  Disgusted, he pictured the man passed out on the sofa at home. How badly Herb had wanted and needed a father in his life. Someone there to protect and guide him throughout his early years. Someone there he could admire and shape his own character after. But all he had was the fear of his father’s unstable disposition and the conviction to never be anything like him.

  Herb looked at his watch. 7:38 in the evening. He’d been sitting there for over three hours.

  An abrupt movement came from the bed, a jerk of an arm. Herb saw his mother’s head turn on the pillow, heard the change in her pattern of breathing. He leaned closer, fighting a wave of emotion.

  “Mama.”

  Slowly, his mother’s eyes opened and rolled toward him. She looked pitiful, he thought, a confused little old woman. He watched her lips part as she recognized who he was.

  “Herbie.” Her voice sounded tiny, weak, almost inaudible. Hearing it made him cringe.

  “Please.” He gently touched her forehead. “Don’t try to talk.”

  “I…I’m going back to God now.”

  The words alarmed and overwhelmed him. He felt too much to speak. His eyes became wet.

  Seeing her son’s tearful expression, her own eyes glistened. “Don’t cry, Herbie.” With great effort, she reached for his arm. Her hand felt skeletal, her fingertips cold. Their touch made him shiver. “I’ll be all right.”

  Herb’s face began to crumble.

  His mother turned her head on the pillow, gazing up at the ceiling. A trace of a smile formed on her lips, a dreamy look in her eyes.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she murmured. “So beau…”

  A soft gurgling sound came from her throat. Her hand released his arm. Then the heart monitor let off a piercing alarm. The line on the screen went flat.

  “Mama.”

  Herb stared into his mother’s face. Her eyes were fixed wide, unblinking. It was an image that would haunt his dreams for nights on end. As if to rouse her, he touched her arm.

  His voice cracked. “Mama.”

  A red-haired nurse rushed into the room, breaking the moment. She checked his mother’s vitals, never lifting her head. Herb watched her, feeling helpless. He began shaking. No longer able to look at his mother’s face, he turned away.

  All at once, the nurse stopped and seemed to inhale. She flipped a switch on the heart monitor and the screen went black. When at last she looked up, her sympathetic expression said it all. His mother was gone.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  Herb realized that he wasn’t prepared for any of this. Suddenly, he felt the exhaustion of many sleepless nights overtake him. Bending forward, he put his hands over his face.

  “Do you need a moment?” the nurse asked.

  His voice came out as a croak. “No.”

  He rose from the chair, light-headed.

  “I’m done,” he said and left.

  There was no time to wait for the elevator. He rushed down the stairwell, bursting through the door at the first floor. In the lobby, he ran wildly past people startled by his panic. The parking lot outside was slick with rain, shimmered with puddles.

  Herb went around the side of the hospital, panting and trembling. He leaned against the brick wall of the building and wept.

  He never noticed that the cold rain had stopped or the break in the cloud cover, revealing a sliver of moon.

  * * *

  When Herb opened his eyes again, he saw a beautiful autumn day. Around him, birds were singing in the trees. There was a chill in the air, a promise that winter wasn’t too far off. The sun was bright and patches of clouds flecked the sky. Fresh-fallen leaves carpeted the grass and the smell of their decay mingled with wood smoke from nearby houses.

  In front of Herb sat a coffin on top of a lowering device draped with a royal blue skirt that ruffled under the hint of a breeze. A floral arrangement spread color across the coffin’s lid.

  Slowly, he scanned the small crowd of mourners gathered there. He stopped and focused on himself as a young man. His face was sad and empty.

  * * *

  Herb held a bouquet of flowers in one hand, while he picked distractedly at the hem of his suit coat with his other. He knew many of the faces surrounding him. Parishioners from his mother’s church. Her older sister, Marjorie. Her two brothers, Pierre and Ray. A handful of cousins, nieces and nephews. Some of their expressions were broken, others stoic and unreadable.

  As Herb looked at them, he felt the passage of time, the unforgiveness of age. They all appeared old to him, graying or balding. Most he hadn’t seen since childhood. Would he see any of them again?

  The graveside service was short and decorous—his mother’s dying wish. No one revealed that she had grown up in a small village in Quebec, had married there, and then migrated shortly afterward to Nova Scotia to start a family farm with her husband. The details of her death were not mentioned. All that was spoken was the fact that she had been a devoted Catholic and had accepted God as her savior.

  At the head of the coffin, an elderly priest in a black chasuble began to read from his Bible. In unison, the people bowed their heads.

  “…And as Jesus said unto Martha, ‘I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;

  “’And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die�
�’”

  The priest moved forward and anointed the coffin with holy water.

  “May eternal light shine upon her, O Lord: With Thy Saints forever, because Thou art gracious. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her: For evermore with Thy Saints, because Thou art gracious…”

  The coffin began to descend. Inch by inch it lowered into the ground. Watching, Herb’s eyes filled with tears. He was barely conscious of the quiet sobbing that broke out over the crowd. The thought of leaving his mother alone in the coldness of the earth made his heart ache. A nightmare. None of this could be real.

  “…The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit. May she rest in peace. Amen”

  With slow steps Herb walked toward the coffin. For a moment, the world around him disappeared. He became a little boy again, lying in bed, listening to his mother read him bedtime stories.

  Biting his lip, he tossed the bouquet on top of the lid.

  Abandoned. He felt abandoned.

  The crowd slowly started to disperse. His mother’s sister and brothers filed past him, muttering their condolences. As if in valediction, each gently squeezed his arm and was gone.

  Behind him he heard footsteps rustling through the leaves. He turned around and saw his father. Despite being in his fifties now, the man still looked rugged. Barrel chest, broad shoulders. His hair was thin and steel-gray. Age had brought his skin closer to the bone. His face looked desiccated, every line and wrinkle brought out by the bright sunshine. A crosshatch of spider veins stained his cheeks. In his fierce gaze there seemed a cold indifference to his son’s sorrow.

  He gripped Herb’s arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Herb flinched, afraid to move or speak, weakened by the primal fear his father still invoked. Never had the impulse been so strong to break free of this place and this man.

  His father’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I said, let’s get the hell out of here. There’s work to be done.” He tugged on his son’s arm, pulling him forward. It was at that moment that Herb smelled the booze. “And don’t make a scene either.”